as the waves crash
by kathleenfergie
Summary: She wished herself barren. Unlike the man who was in love with her, Hermione never wanted to bring a child into this world. She wasn't even completely sure she wanted to be in this world. Warning: ends with suicide. Oneshot.


Hi. So this is new for me. This is set a few months after the war has ended, and pretty $uch Hermione is just lamenting about marriage and children.

Warning: it ends with suicide. If that upsets you, please don't read it. Or read up until te last two paragraphs.

Enjoy.

* * *

She stood, leaning against the foundation of a makeshift deck that Bill had built during his time here at Shell Cottage. Hermione stared out at the vast ocean; it's cold, stormy winds blowing in her face. Bill and Fleur had long since left this little hideaway, every trace of them gone. Hermione had asked to borrow it for a while. After the Battle, she found herself constantly with people, always voices, noises, camera flashes, the scratching of quills on notepads. She grew tired of touring the Wizarding world, and after a short time, she left Ron and Harry to find solace in this small cottage.

She had told no one but Bill and Fleur where she was, just so that no one could disturb her. For the few months she had spent here, Hermione had found sanctuary in the crash of the waves. She didn't bring an owl with her, so she sent no letters. She often spent days like this, leaning or sitting on the deck, looking out at the water. Some days she conjured an armchair and a blanket, settling down outside with a book and a cup of tea, getting lost in Muggle classics for hours.

Today, though, she wasn't so much focused on the water as she was the shore. It was barren and lifeless, nothing managed to grow, not even weeds. There was no vegetation until you hit the field line. From then on it was just sand for days. She always wondered how something so close to light and water could never house life, never giving birth to the greens of nature.

Hermione wished her own womb was like that. For once, she wished herself barren. Unlike the man who was in love with her, Hermione never wanted to bring a child into this world. She wasn't even completely sure _she _wanted to be in this world. Sure, the war had been over for almost half a year, Voldemort and his men had fallen, but the path of destruction was still there, marred by his dark force. After all these months, Hogwarts and the Ministry were still being rebuilt.

Hermione did not want to explain the hatred she faced every single day to her child. She didn't want to give the child her history, to explain why she was covered in indelible scars. That she herself was a painting of no-man's-land, marked by barbed wire, blood, and dirt. Of course, she had washed all of that away quite some time ago, but it was still there, a phantom pain. The child would surely have nightmares if Hermione ever told them the truth about her teenage years.

If she ever had a child, Hermione thought, she'd raise it to be Muggle. That child didn't need the prejudice and scorn the Wizarding world brought with it. She could teach it to ride a bike instead of a broom. Write with a pen, not a quill. To cook and clean without spells. The child could come home to Hermione every night and tell her all about their day, instead of sending it thousands of miles in a letter. Hermione realized, though, that she couldn't just abandon her friends for the white picket fence dream. Hermione didn't want magical children, but she wasn't willing to sacrifice the people she loved just to have a Muggle life.

Then, there was _him_. Ron. She couldn't deny that he'd always wanted children; having a giant family ran in the Weasley blood. Fleur was already pregnant, and if Hermione wasn't so embarrassed to think it, she was pretty sure Ginny was as well. She tried not to think of Harry's love life, it just made her go red in the face. She herself hadn't even had sex with Ron yet. The trauma of the war had left her too broken to be ready for something like that. Too many people had touched her in a harmful way, she wasn't ready to let anyone but herself touch her in any way for a while.

That was why she was there, at the cottage. To let herself heal.

Hermione knew that getting married and having dozens of curly ginger children wasn't going to heal her.

She couldn't imagine, though, going back to Ron and telling him that. She didn't want to watch him get on one knee and ask her _the _question, because honestly she would say no. She wasn't ready for it. She wasn't ready for sex, she wasn't ready for children, and she wasn't ready for marriage. At least not right now. Telling him that would break him.

'_But, 'Mione, why?'_

Why, indeed.

Maybe Harry would understand that she needed this isolation. He'd been in the spotlight his whole life, and it has since erupted even more now that he defeated Voldemort. He was still everyone's beloved Chosen One. He'd never find sanctuary or quiet. Not even if he switched continents.

Different continents. Hermione then though of Australia, where her obliviated parents still held residence. She didn't want to go back to them. She didn't want to tell them how their bright young girl had hurt and killed people. She too did not want them to see her scars. She never explained to them what 'mudblood' had meant, and now it was carved into her skin, right in the place where a Death Eater would receive their mark. It was almost funny.

The biggest scar she had was a network of lines running from beside her left breast to down below her right hip, across her stomach. She had gotten it from a vicious cutting hex, which had spread like frost across her torso. Hermione had once stood naked in front of a mirror, tracing each line and swirl.

Maybe Ron wouldn't want her now that she wasn't beautiful anymore, and she would never have to worry about bearing him children. What a dream that would be.

'_You're still beautiful to me, Bill.'_

Hermione laughed then, her voice clashing with the sound of the tide. She wished she could keep the same confidence in love that Fleur had.

She felt splatters of water on her face and looked up to the sky. The heavens were weeping again, so she went inside. Looking out the kitchen window, she said thought to herself. _What if I never left this place? I could stay here. Grow old. _They weren't unlike the words she had spoken to Harry in the Forest of Dean. She hadn't meant them back then, but now…now she wasn't so sure. She could, indeed, stay there for the rest of her life. But was that what she wanted?

Hermione sat down at the table, grabbing parchment and a writing utensil, and wrote a letter. It was addressed, literally, to everyone. It was an apology and a goodbye to everyone she loved. She left it on the table for Bill and Fleur to find when they came looking for her.

Like the deck, Bill had also built a long dock that stretched into the water, almost twenty feet long. He'd built it with magic, for no reason but to just sit and enjoy the water away from the noises of the shore. She left her shoes and coat behind, walking out in jeans and a tank top, immediately soaked by the torrent of rain. She walked her own funeral march down the dock, stopping once she reached the last plank.

Although Hermione grew up in the Muggle world, she couldn't swim.

It was that day that Hermione became one with the ocean, her oxygen slowly turning into the water that filled her lungs, the waves swallowing her whole. She prayed that her body wouldn't wash up, that it'd just sink to the bottom. But she guessed it wasn't important anymore.

Hermione was free.


End file.
